A song in her heart

Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn) wrote 255 songs, many of them never published. Tenor Timothy Parker-Langston's new online edition is making them available for all, as he explains to Rebecca Franks

- Rebecca Franks

‘Shocking news!’ tweeted Alexandra Dariescu in May. ‘Next week I was supposed to perform the Florence Price Piano Concerto, but hiring the sheet music for a female composer is five times more expensive than the Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini I was coupling it with, so Price is cancelled!’ The Romanian pianist’s tweet was met with an outpouring of similar stories: tales of published editions of music by female composers riddled with errors, of hire costs being ten times more expensive than for works by male counterparts, of full scores not matching up to orchestral parts. While copyright may well be a factor when it comes to the current price of playing Price, Dariescu’s tweet tapped into one of the all-too-real problems facing any performer who wants to broaden their repertoire. Performers need readily available, well-edited scores – and they aren’t always easy to find.

This was the issue Timothy Parker-Langston faced in 2020 when he started exploring the music of Fanny Hensel (née MendelssohnBartholdy), one of the most prolific female composers of the 19th century (and sister of Felix Mendelssohn). The British tenor, who sings with the Royal Opera House chorus, had fallen in love with her music and wanted to perform her songs. ‘Occasionally you have a really strong reaction to the voice of a composer, and immediately I thought it was different to anything else I could think of,’ he explains. ‘She was really bold and audacious, and she experimented in all these different styles. Then I started to learn about her life – and I just got hooked.’